


for a better tomorrow

by dragonlisette



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Dan and Phil World Tour 2018: Interactive Introverts, Depression, Established Relationship, Family, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 17:03:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15999560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonlisette/pseuds/dragonlisette
Summary: Phil focuses back on the game and on the chatter of the crew, and when he looks back Dan’s eyes are falling slowly shut, his face as open as if he were on the sofa at home. Some days are good. Today is good. Some days are bad. It’s just like at home, only now the therapist is on FaceTime in the back lounge with the door shut and Phil has to keep his mouth shut too if Dan comes out with shivery hands and red-rimmed eyes. It’s just like at home, except for the constant grueling schedule, except for the constant scrutiny they’re under. There’s no room for anything here.(for the phandomficfests Tour II festival)





	for a better tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by the wonderful rose [@moon-boye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sky_full_of_roses/pseuds/moon-boye)!

The atmosphere immediately post-show is like nothing else Phil knows. There’s the music bringing them offstage, the huge roar of voices and applause and receding feet, someone at their elbow to sweep them away to a dressing room before he can even make eye contact with Dan. His breath is still coming rushed, adrenaline crackling, sweat drying at his temples, and the narrow hallways are cramped with the crew coming the other way, fresh and kicked into high gear, holding packing diagrams to start teardown. There’s still a shred of guilt somewhere, telling Phil that he should be jumping up to help with the clearing away like his mum taught him to jump up to clear the table. But show fifty-sixty-something in a row and he accepts it. They’ve done their work for the evening, and now it’s time for the people hired (not by them, but by the people they hired to hire them) to bring the night to a close.

“High five,” Dan says, close behind him in the dressing room, and he spins past in a blur of energy, oddly solid-looking without spotlights on him. He smells of sweat and the remnants of meet-and-greet cologne, and he plucks at his damp shirt like he’s about to peel it off. “Good show, fucking hot, no more outdoor venues – you hear that, Marianne?” – directed at Marianne, who has opened the door a crack and looks not particularly impressed. “No more outdoor venues, I am _moist_ and the wildlife was out of _control_ – ”

Phil steps closer to Marianne and lets Dan finish his monologue to nobody while she delivers messages – hour til we leave, sandwiches down the hall, good energy tonight – says “okay, thank you,” and turns back just as Dan comes to a halt. He’s bobbing on his feet, curly-headed and flushed.

“Remember to breathe,” Phil says, and he curls up in the single uncomfortable armchair to check twitter mentions. It’s a comfortable routine. Dan gets noisy and busy to wear off the excess adrenaline and Phil ignores him and rests his tired throat.

“Imagine if you’d fallen off the edge into that pit,” Dan says a while later, sitting on the table and swinging his legs back and forth, back and forth. The rhythm is soothing and the post-show crash is making Phil sleepy anyway. “Would have been such a dramatic death.”

“Mm,” Phil says. He’s already wiped this show’s slate clean, forgotten the details of what they said and did. He remembers an alarming drop off the edge of the stage, and Dan pulling him back from it, and he partially formulates a plan to flatter Dan until he fetches him sandwiches. “Was a good show. You were heroic.”

“Literally,” Dan says, kicking his feet. “And you didn’t save me once from any of those moths so I think you should go get us those sandwiches.”

“But,” Phil says, and laughs, and catches at one of Dan’s hands without bothering to explain why he’s laughing.

* * *

Tonight’s little universe swirls away in nighttime forests and the hum of the bus. Dan sits on his bunk in worn pajama pants, the lines of him relaxed around his phone, head tilted and his headphone cords tumbling down his neck. Phil catches glimpses of him every now and then from where he sits playing Bananagrams with the crew in the front lounge. He looks calm, content. They’re performing so much (for the audience, for their coworkers, for each other) that it’s only in moments like these that Phil feels he can really get a tab on Dan’s mood.

The bus changes lanes and they all have to dive after the tiles in a scurry of laughter and movement. Phil focuses back on the game and on the chatter of the crew, and when he looks back Dan’s eyes are falling slowly shut, his face as open as if he were on the sofa at home. Some days are good. Today is good. Some days are bad. It’s just like at home, only now the therapist is on FaceTime in the back lounge with the door shut and Phil has to keep his mouth shut too if Dan comes out with shivery hands and red-rimmed eyes. It’s just like at home, except for the constant grueling schedule, except for the constant scrutiny they’re under. There’s no room for anything here.

Sarah pokes his shoulder – _it’s your turn_ – and Phil clicks back into the game again. It’s no good to dwell, and he knows that, but there’s no time here to actually think.

He loses, badly, and endures the teases about the English degree because by show fifty-sixty-something they’ve all realized that Phil doesn’t mind teasing. He’s glad the crew that sleeps on the bus treats him like a friend and not The Talent, even if he knows there are conversations he’s not privy to, that they have a group identity separate from their bosses. He begs off a second game. They let him go easy and he knows it’s because they all realized a long time ago that both their bosses are genuinely introverted and alarmingly conjoined.

“Yo,” Dan says, blinking up at him, letting his headphones fall to his shoulders. He’s sleepy but present, and Phil pushes his legs until he tucks them up and lets Phil settle at the foot of the bunk. There really isn’t enough room for one six-foot-plus human in the thing, let alone two, but they sort of fumble along and cherish the unavoidable-and-therefore-professional physical contact.

“Hi, homie,” Phil says, scratching a mosquito bite on his ankle. He returns Dan’s eyeroll without having to look. “Browsing the spicy memes?”

“As always,” Dan says, and yawns through the words, “crispy memes.”

“Crunchy.”

There’s a comfortable silence. Dan eases his legs over Phil’s lap, bare feet searching for the blanket. “Check your messages.”

Phil digs his phone out of his pocket and wishes now he’d taken the time to put pajama pants on. His knees are cold in the bus’s aircon but he doesn’t want to stop being Dan’s professional calf pillow.

 **_Dan, now //_ ** _like how dodge would it look if we closed the curtain_

Phil blinks at him. _super dodge why_

Dan makes an attempt at a halfway-subtle pout, and Phil has to compress his lips against a laugh.

_professionalism Howell_

_don’t kinkshame my cuddle sluttiness_

Phil doesn’t indulge him with a response, just glances down to make sure the crew is busy with their game and their microwave popcorn and then disentangles the blanket from Dan’s feet to pull it up over his lap. The warmth seeps in, a comfort and closeness and almost privacy that whets his aching hunger for it. Dan yawns again and wriggles closer, his eyes drooping. Phil taps back to the rest of his messages, scrolls for a second.

“I’ve got 38 unread messages,” he says softly, poking Dan’s knee, because he knows Dan will scowl, which he does.

“How hard is it to click on a message when it arrives?” he mumbles, an ancient rhetorical question between them. Phil ignores the question and 36 of the messages in favor of two from Kathryn Lester, half an hour ago.

 _Good Morning child xx_  

_I know you are busy but your Dad and I miss hearing from you, love to you and Dan too xx_

“Mum says hi,” Phil reports, pleased. “Well, she says love. To me and you too.”

“The fuck is she awake for,” Dan says, his face halfway in the pillow now. “I don’t know what time it is there but I hate her and her early morning self-righteous power-walking friends.”

“Call her with me?” Phil says, and Dan shakes his head, but Phil puts her on speakerphone anyway, lets her soothing cadence fill the bunk along with the roar of a Manx breeze and the chatter of her walking group in the background. He lets her scold him for how late it is, promises to give Dan messages even though Dan lies across his lap with his eyes closed, pretending not to listen but smiling a little all the same. He tells her she got to be a punchline on stage in Cincinnati and reports three or four social awkwardnesses from the last few days.

“Oh, Phil,” she sighs, when he’s come to a stopping place. “You’ll be okay, child, you just have to remember to breathe.”

Dan’s eyes blink open, watching the ceiling, and Phil says “yeah,” because none of the Lesters ever talk about it, not really, but he knows there’s a tangle of fear at the bottom of his mother’s stomach the same way he knows there’s a tangle of fear at the bottom of his own. He tells her it’s two in the morning and she says goodnight and there’s a long silence in the bunk, Dan’s legs pressing into Phil’s lap. Phil glances down at the lounge every few minutes, shifts Dan’s legs over the side to the floor as soon as Lauren calls a goodnight and heads for the bathroom. Dan makes a tiny grumbling sound and props them up, knees high so Phil can’t see his face.

“Where are we tomorrow?” he asks, just as Phil thinks he’s dozed off. “I mean. Hotel?” and Phil knows their thoughts are running down the same mental tracks. Privacy. Unguarded conversation. Hands tangled, a real cuddle, space to exist together and come in and out of touch without thinking about it.

“Don’t think so,” he says, because he doesn’t remember and he usually remembers their hotel nights. He craves a shower now, soft towels and a door that closes and then a bed that accommodates two people side by side. He pats Dan’s knees because that’s all he gets, and crawls out from the bunk, managing to bash his arm against the wall and unplug the fairy lights in the same movement.

“America why,” Dan says, more of a mumble than anything, not even acknowledging Phil’s yelp of pain, and Phil glances up and down the bus and lifts Dan’s hand from his chest and presses his lips to it too quick and gentle to be called a kiss. It leaves the bitterness of bug spray and cheap soap behind on his mouth, but the way Dan’s dimple appears makes up for it. He doesn’t open his eyes, but Phil feels the smile as he slides the curtain shut.

* * *

The days spin by like a broken cassette tape spewing film. Hours of exhaustion followed by what feels like a few quick moments of electric-blood adrenaline followed by hours of exhaustion, and they spill into each other so fast that Phil forgets to notice how each individual moment connects to the next. They’re both so tired. The time they spend together is more likely to pass in sleepy silence than in anything else. Sleep. Road. Meet and greet. Sound check. Show. Sleep.

Phil tries to pay attention. He watches Dan’s face in unguarded moments. He listens for irritation in the crew’s voices. He smiles at venue staff there to unlock the dressing rooms and show them where the bathrooms are. He reads twitter mentions after every single show, even if his eyes blur with sleep. Everything has become so routine that the minutes slide like sand through his fingers, and he clings to the few markers he knows to measure a difference from day to day.

“Morning,” Marianne tells him, her voice fading in through his sleepy skull. It’s a gray kind of early and there’s suburban sprawl sliding past outside the windows. He stumbles on a minuscule shudder of the bus and she catches his shoulder without looking away from where her cardboard cup of instant oatmeal slowly rotates in the microwave.

“Mm,” Phil says, and opens mostly-bare cupboards. There’s a leaden kind of dread setting in, cemented when he glances at the bin and the sad canister at the top. “We’re out of coffee powder?”

Marianne, one of those pretentious cretins who scorns powdered beverages, glances absently at the cupboard. “I guess so.” The microwave beeps, and she takes out her oatmeal and moves on steady legs toward the table, seemingly oblivious to the emergency at hand. Phil stands despairingly at the counter for another few moments and wobbles back to the bunks.

“Dan,” he says, pulling at his curtain. People are stirring and iPhone alarms are going off around him, which makes it acceptable to speak in the bunk area. “Dan, there’s no _coffee_.”

Dan is lying on his back, bleary eyes focused on the ceiling, but he squints at Phil’s face when he slides the curtain back. About half of Phil’s brain is sulking in the corner, and the other half, save about three responsible neurons, is telling him to get in bed with Dan and go back to sleep.

The bus driver’s low American drawl crackles on the intercom. _Twenty minutes away from the venue. One of the equipment trucks was held up. Good morning._ Phil groans and pushes his way into the bunk, propping himself up against Dan’s pillows with his legs stretched out in the aisle. “ _Dan_.”

Dan’s eyes close, turning a little toward the wall. He’s tired. Phil’s tired. Phil closes his eyes too and lets the silence hang.

It’s maybe ten seconds and maybe twenty minutes before the bus grumbles to a halt. When Phil opens his eyes, the bus has burst into action, people tying shoes and combing hair. Lauren’s on her phone, purse in her hand, and she taps Phil’s shoulder.

“There’s a Starbucks two blocks away, you want something?”

“Coffee,” Phil says, before he can think, and she laughs. “Please. Anything.” His wallet is in his bunk, and he stumbles out of Dan’s to find America dollars. She takes the money without argument, and Phil’s grateful because sometimes they offer to pay for him and it’s incredibly awkward to try to convince them that really he should be the one paying for them.

He dresses and pulls the curtain back on Dan’s bunk, finds Dan curled on his side, face hidden. They were both up late last night, and it’s a brutal schedule. Phil touches his shoulder, wobbles it hard because they both need more than a gentle shake to wake them now.

“Dan,” he says, and then, “hey.”

“Mm.”

“Gotta wake up.”

“I’m awake.”

A sick feeling starts to settle at the pit of Phil’s stomach. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Phil slides carefully back onto the bunk. The bus is empty for the moment, just the two of them and the hum of the city that surrounds them. Phil is lost. Always lost, with this veil between them, and of course he should have realized earlier but they really are both so tired. “Are you – ”

The pause hangs bitter in the air, and Dan’s face is still hidden. “Depressed? Yeah.”

“I was going to say _are you okay_.”

More silence, and Dan raising himself on an elbow, hoisting himself up to sit with his shoulder brushing Phil’s. “Yeah. Just. Episode. I do everything right and there’s an episode.”

Phil watches his profile. “Text Naomi?”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Let me help you.”

“I’m _fine_ , Phil.”

“Okay.” He leans some warmth and weight into Dan’s side, feels instead of hears his tiny sigh. His head settles slowly on Phil’s shoulder like it’s too heavy to hold itself up alone, and then with a burst of activity the crew is piling back onto the bus with drink carriers and paper bags and they spring apart.

“Coffee for Phil,” Lauren says brightly, tucking a warm cup into his hand, something that smells chocolatey and has _soy_ scrawled across the side. He thanks her, takes a sip, and when he looks again Dan’s bunk is empty.

* * *

Marianne dictates the schedule from her laptop while doing her hair in the front camera of her phone. There’s a hotel tonight, and Phil’s Starbucks-blessed brain is grateful, but there’s still a chasm of tight logistics between now and then. Dan gets dressed and goes back to bed, and Phil sits with him for a while and watches him stare at the wall with half-closed eyes, and when he goes to brush his teeth, Phil slides onto the kitchen bench next to Marianne.

“Dan’s not good,” he says in a half whisper, because the bus is small, so small, and a few people are still jumping on and off with muffins in their hands, their talk rattling from wall to wall.

Marianne’s eyes snap to his in the camera view, but her hands keep moving, tidying out her curls. “As in what?”

He knows she’s already drafting plans and emails in her head, everything up to _cancel the show_ , because she has this uncanny and irreplaceable ability to stare disaster and worst case scenarios in the face without flinching, where Phil quails at Plan C. “Not – ” he starts, and feels like a useless, anxious lump under her sharp gaze. “I mean. He’s okay. But if you can make the schedule easier on him – ”

Her busy hands drop to her side. “I’ll try,” she says, softer, and touches his elbow as she pushes past him.

What she works out is getting them into the venue an hour early and fetching them a private lunch instead of the busy catered meal. She says this offhand, as if it were a casual suggestion, but Phil still feels Dan’s eyes scorching the side of his face and he has to struggle to nod along.

“Thanks,” he says cheerily, “yeah, cool, we’ll be ready in a second,” and the back of his neck itches as he heads to get his bag. He’s completely unsurprised to find Dan blocking the aisle when he turns.

“Why did she change the schedule?”

“I think it’s nice,” Phil says noncommittally, but he’s always been a bad liar where Dan is concerned.

“You asked for it.”

“I didn’t,” Phil says, and this he can say steadily. Dan’s staring somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoulder, hunched and miserable and always bad at eye contact when he’s like this. “She changed it to make it easier on us, I guess.”

“Make it easier on me.”

“Sure,” Phil says, which is a terrible mistake.

“Because I’m weak and you told her to.”

“Dan – ”

“I didn’t need special consideration.”

Phil’s stomach twists. “Maybe I wanted something nice to happen for you.”

They both stand in silence. Dan won’t make eye contact, and there’s pain wrenching because Phil can’t help but Dan won’t turn to anyone else. It’s just the two of them against the world, except sometimes it’s just Phil against a washing ocean of distance and fog. Dan turns, finally, and Phil follows him out, and the time and distance between the bus and the venue unravels, uneven.

The dressing room is blessedly quiet. Phil takes it in without really looking. A scratchy green couch, off-white walls, dirty mirrors. And Dan. Dan stands in the center of the room, too tall, too gangly, his arms useless at his sides, looking at Phil in this helpless, apologetic way, and Phil’s heart aches for him.

“Sit,” he says. There are two paper bags of lunch on the table, left there by Marianne, and he turns to them, pulls out greasy cardboard boxes. Floating at the bottom, there’s one packet of every type of condiment, ketchup and mayonnaise, honey mustard and barbecue, and Phil’s eyes sting with unexpected tears. Tears because Marianne loves Dan so much, and tears because Dan won’t even be able to taste the dips and there’s nothing he can do to change that. He coughs through the lump in his throat. “We’ve got two hours before we have to look nice, and there’s three orders of chips in here.”

When he turns around, Dan has lowered himself onto the sofa, curling sideways onto the arm. His face is empty but his eyes are focused. “ ‘m sorry,’ he says, and Phil says “for what,” in a voice that shakes, and he sits on the floor and hands Dan chips, one by one, until together they’ve made their way through what feels like enough calories to get through the show.

* * *

Later, Phil locks himself in the bathroom with his bag, concealer and salt spray and cologne applied easy as breathing, and he leans his forehead against the cold tile wall and turns on Spotify so he can’t hear Dan’s voice outside, soft and pained and resigned all at once. In England it’s outside working hours, and Phil thinks Naomi is the only person he’s never met whom he can truly say he loves.

“Hey,” Dan says softly when Phil comes back into the room. He’s sitting up now, phone loose in his hand.

“Hey.”

The air feels a little lighter, a little cleaner. Phil touches his hair in the mirror, watches Dan behind him, is reminded of Marianne that morning and then tangentially of the dips, and then to room service and whether tonight they’ll get to actually cuddle in a real bed and watch Netflix on a laptop and –

“I can hear you thinking,” Dan says, slow and maybe fond. “Shh.”

“Did Naomi help?”

The silence sits a second. Dan two years ago would have spat something embarrassed and defensive. Dan now chews his thumbnail absently. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

“Want more food?”

Dan pulls a face. “No.”

“There’s _chicken nuggets_ ,” he says, twangily American, and he brings the box and a handful of sauce packets across to Dan anyway. He probably won’t eat them. There’s an ocean between them, like no matter how far Phil reaches he’ll never be able to touch. There’s only forty-five minutes before the meet and greet starts. By all rights, nothing should feel okay, but Dan looks at him clear-eyed and says “hey,” again, and it means more words than Phil’s English degree can even start to parse.

* * *

The meet and greet room is small today, cramped, full of nerves and people and chatter, and Phil stands closer to Dan in the hallway than he usually does. Marianne’s already been there twice, pulling Dan aside by his wrist to tug him down to her height and speak briskly in his ear, and Dan looks flustered and faraway at the same time.

“Let’s go, Dan-o,” Phil says, more chipper than he feels, because it’s literally the only thing he can think of to say that has even a hope of making Dan smile. It doesn’t, so he kicks Dan’s ankle instead and gets a sideways frown. “Dan.”

A puff of a sigh. “Fine.”

“You greet, I meet?”

“I greet, you meet.”

It’s standard protocol for Dan’s bad days. Dan says hi and gives the first hug, and everyone is so in-the-moment that they don’t realize Phil’s carrying on the whole conversation, holding the things to sign, saying thank you. Dan just smiles and bobs and takes the pictures and closes his eyes in the breaths between people.

“Hi,” says teenage girl number 33, breathless and flushed, hands shaking around an iPhone and a handful of tiny rainbow flags. In the spare seconds it takes for Dan to say “hi how’s it going?” and wrap his long arms around her tiny frame, Phil wonders with a poison shock of fear to the heart what she’s going to ask. People do that sometimes, and the politeness with which he has to brush off the question entirely leaves sandpaper on his nerves. And then she’s jumped into his arms too and he lets the worry slip away in favor of riding the moment. She’s vibrating with nerves and smells of vanilla and he tries to smile warmly and ask her name.

“I’m Chloe – ” she says, rapid-fire and panicky, “ – can we take our selfie with the flags, I want to come out to my mom and you two are so important to me – ”

Phil’s ready to answer like he’s been doing all hour, but as he’s opening his mouth Dan has already jumped in.

“Sure, of course,” he’s saying, and steering her between them, and he takes her hand and a flag which leaves Phil to take the iPhone.

“You’ve got the long arms,” he says indignantly, and when Dan just laughs at him, because there’s no time to actually figure this out, “Chloe, I’m so sorry if I drop your phone – ”

She’s brought a TABINOF to be signed, but Dan signs one of the flags too and gives her an extra hug and tells her good luck and she’s brave, and Phil just smiles and waves because this tiny curly-haired girl has chipped into Dan’s cave and let a sunbeam in, and she won’t even ever know it.

It’s three people later that he realizes Dan’s kept the flag, tossed it back on the table of letters and gifts. When the room is emptied and Marianne’s packing the contents of the table into a plastic bag to go through on the bus, he glances over and sees Dan tucking it into his pocket.

* * *

The night’s show is not extraordinary. It goes fast, and mostly Dan says the same things he always says. Phil won’t pretend there aren’t moments of fear, when he thinks Dan will say something he’ll regret. The lines about them being real and true with the audience come off less genuine and the section where Dan claims people liked him better as wholesome Howell is a lot harsher than usual. But Phil knows it’s only ringing hollow to him. Knows that the audience is joyfully cheering for the bad endings and singing along to the yee meme with the obliviousness of a piece of driftwood caught in a riptide. Tomorrow, he thinks. Tomorrow it will be better.

At intermission he pokes Dan’s shoulder and says “you pick the Netflix, yeah?” through half of a yawn. Dan fumbles with the lid of his water bottle and nods. The costumes are ready for act two, and he avoids eye contact to pluck at the sleeve of one of the jumpsuits.

“You didn’t have to tell Marianne,” Dan says, softly enough that Phil almost doesn’t hear him.

“Okay,” Phil says, because he doesn’t want an argument right now. “Okay.”

* * *

Two hours later, he’s standing in the too-bright lobby of the hotel, Dan at his elbow. He’s been hanging close since the end of the show, looking at Phil whenever anyone asks them a question or tells them where to be. Phil can’t mind, not exactly. He looks down and sees Dan’s shoes scuff the threadbare carpet.

Marianne returns with keycards, ground floor for Dan and third for Phil. “I win,” Phil says, as cheerful as he can muster, and Dan turns away. Marianne catches Phil’s arm.

“Will you text me how he’s doing?”

“Yeah,” Phil says after a second, trying not to feel annoyed, like he’s playing the part of two people at the same time. She nods, and Phil turns away, drags his suitcase toward the elevator and finds Dan waiting, not looking at him.

“You’re on the ground floor,” Phil says slowly, fixing his eyes on the glowing up arrow.

“Yeah,” Dan says. A pause. The elevator doors beep and open, and Phil hoists his stuff in. The doors close. “Is that okay?”

“Dan. Yeah, it’s – okay.”

“I guess I don’t want to be alone right now.”

The elevator beeps. Once and twice and three times. The doors open to the third floor. Neither of them move, and the doors groan shut again.

“What did Naomi suggest?” Phil’s eyes are fixed on the shining metal, the peeling fire code.

“She told me to reach out.” There’s a pregnant pause. “Told me to rely on people who aren’t you.”

Phil looks at him and blinks. Dan laughs first, except his eyes are wet, and then they’re both sort of laughing and Phil gets his arms around Dan’s shoulders. “If you were at home, you wouldn’t. You’d get on one of your dumb Discords and play games with people.”

“It’s different here.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the only familiar thing I have.”

Phil eases Dan’s head down onto his shoulder, pretends not to hear him sniffle. “We could find the room.”

“I love elevators,” Dan says, American accent, and they don’t move. Phil dreads the moment someone presses the call button.

“Why don’t you want Marianne to know?”

Dan pushes away then, gathers his things and jams the open door button. There’s a rush of cooler air from the hallway and Phil sighs and starts moving his bags.

“Dan. You know you’re not weak.”

His jaw is set, standing in the center of the hall. “Was it 326?”

“Yes. Dan. Shit.”

Dan takes the card from his loose grip and swipes in, shoves the door open. Inside, it smells of cheap detergent and mothballs.

“I don’t know,” Dan says, turned away, into the dark. “I don’t know, it’s hard – you’re the only one I can believe that’s actually here for the real me and not some made-up version – ”

“That’s not true.”

“Okay.”

There’s silence, then. Dan fiddles with the handle of his bag and Phil gives up and turns the lights on, closes the door. The room is small and there are crooked watercolors of birds tacked on the walls. The duvet, when he touches it, is scratchy polyester, but there are fresh lines from a vacuum cleaner on the carpet.

“What would you do right now if I was good?” Dan says.

Phil considers this. Dan is still standing in the entryway, looking lost, and Phil wants to make something better. “I’d love a shower,” he offers. “I’d love a shower and also knowing you’re safe.”

“I’m safe,” Dan says. “I am. I could shower. I could go to my room. We could have some time. I could text you.”

“Yeah?” Phil says softly.

“Yeah.”

* * *

  _come to you?_ is Dan’s text when Phil finally gets out of the shower, squinting at his phone blurrily and digging his glasses out of his bookbag. He replies _yes_ because he wants Dan here, now that he’s had the time apart, soaked it in like the hot water. They’re not very good at spending time apart. If they’re not going to solve anything, he’d rather they be together while they don’t solve it.

 _be right there,_ Dan says, and the knock comes at the door so quickly that Phil knows he must have been waiting for the text. He doesn’t mind. He won’t call him out on it. He just opens the door a crack and hides behind it in his towel wrap while Dan squeezes in.

“Nice outfit,” is the only thing he says. His curls are wet so he’s showered too, dressed in sweatpants and hoodie, his phone and water bottle crammed in the pocket. He kicks his shoes across the room and climbs into the bed, so Phil thinks he’ll be staying a while.

“Shush,” Phil says, and sits in the desk chair to air dry. “Talk?”

A negative sounding _mm mm_ from the duvet pile.

“Netflix and Phil?” About a sixty-five percent success rate on a snort from not-depressed Dan, but about a zero percent success rate tonight. “Do you just wanna sleep?”

A hand curls out from the blankets and reaches in his general direction. “Just – come here, asshole.”

There’s a warmth rising in his stomach that he won’t pretend isn’t about Dan wanting him. He clambers up, holding onto his towels, and drips his way over. Dan blinks up at him from the cave he’s constructed in the collapsing pillow pile, looking frowny and unimpressed, which isn’t fair.

“I’m here.”

“Put some clothes on, I’m not in the mood for your pasty white butt.”

Phil lets the towels fall, quirks his eyebrow, which finally, _finally_ , brings a smile to Dan’s face. “Did you say pasty or tasty?”

“I’ll fucking fight you when I find the energy next week.”

Phil’s suitcase is a mess, which is what happens when they’ve only ever got ten minutes at a time to get ready. He finds boxers and gives up on the rest, climbs into the heavenly cocoon of warmth that Dan’s constructed. Dan goes easy, curls and melts into him, and Phil slides his fingers along his scalp, wishes he could run his lips along the muscles of his back and ease the tension and exhaustion away.

“It was a good show,” is what he says.

Dan hums into the hollow of Phil’s clavicle and Phil closes his eyes. Even now, he can’t help but imagine people at the door, people at the window, but it’s washing away, and they’re hidden here in the blankets, the world charmed safe by the rhythm of Dan’s breath on his shoulder.

“Been better and been worse,” Dan says, so Phil nods. “I know I was off.”

“Not bad,” Phil says.

“Just hard today,” he says, quiet, so quiet, and Phil won’t breathe in case it startles him out of talking. He doesn’t say anything else, and Phil strokes through his hair instead of answering, because he doesn’t understand and he’ll never really understand. Dan’s explained to him so many times, what it feels like to lie motionless and leaden and tearing apart. What it feels like to choke on tasteless food and stare at lifeless words and images. Phil still can’t imagine it, can only hold him and feel the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs and hope and hope for a better tomorrow.

Dan sighs, rubs his nose along Phil’s collarbone to scratch it. “Naomi made me get in that notes page she made me make to remember good things that happen. She told me to find things to be grateful for. To let people help me.”

“It’s good advice.” He keeps his voice noncommittal. Dan is easy to frustrate, and he’s not here to fix anything. Just the listening. It’s just the listening.

“Fucking _annoying_ advice, I know it’s good.” Silence, heartbeat between them, and a final long sigh. “Frustrating being on world tour with you and seeing – love? I guess? – everywhere and just – so hard to love myself.”

Phil kisses his hair and breathes in the scent of him. It’s not a finished conversation. It will never be a finished conversation, not until a far-off future and a last breath. Dan still returns the kiss to Phil’s shoulder, rolls off him, finds his phone. They sit together in quiet and in twitter mentions, and if Dan sniffles a little they don’t mention it. Phil just lets one hand settle in the warmth between Dan’s shoulderblades and scrolls with the other, letting pictures and exclamation points spin past him. Just as he’s about to close the app a new tweet catches his eye.

“Hey – hey, Dan,” he says, and hands him the phone. Dan scrubs his eyes, curls his fingers around it.

“At amazingphil, at danielhowell,” he reads slowly. “TYSM for the picture, the conversation went great. I loved the show, you two are magical.”

He sticks the phone back at Phil, like Phil hasn’t already seen it. Curly-haired Chloe in between them, rainbow flags in their hands, and next to it a selfie of Chloe and what must be her mother, hugging in a dark car in the venue’s parking lot with that same autographed rainbow flag in Chloe’s hair. He presses the heart button and they both watch the red burst.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, soft, locking the phone, sliding it away.

“I’m thinking I want to call my mum,” Dan says. Phil blinks. It wasn’t really what he was expecting to hear.

“Yeah?”

This silence is restless. Dan fiddles with the edge of the sheet like he’s about to fling it back. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Phil says, when nothing else seems to be forthcoming. “Are you going to – ”

“I just – ” and Dan rolls out of bed, walks to the window in four long strides and comes back. His hair has dried in waves and mountains. “I – haven’t ever – ”

Phil nods a little. It’s just not how Dan’s family works. They don’t tell each other things, not really. They live in liminal spaces and half-finished conversations and an aching elastic tension. Maybe Dan’s queer, maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s successful and famous, maybe he’s not. Maybe his dad’s moved out, maybe nothing’s changed since he was a kid. Maybe he’s depressed, maybe –

Dan picks up his phone. “Can you put headphones in?”

Phil nods again, reaches for him. Dan’s impatient with his feelings. Once he decides, it’s a race against second thoughts. “I can leave.”

Dan shakes his head, a quick little movement with his lips a tight line. “Stay. Please.”

“Is she even going to be awake?”

“It’s six hours difference,” Dan says, and scrolls through his contacts with brusque, shivery movements. “One-thirty. Seven-thirty. She’ll be heading to work. We always had our best conversations in the car.”

“Okay,” Phil says, and takes his shoulders and kisses him, a surprised and awkward kiss that doesn’t really land, that takes a moment to ease out. “You don’t have to do this,” he says softly, “but I’m glad you are.”

He puts headphones in but he’s still searching for a video to watch when Dan’s voice cuts into the room, “hi Mum, how are you,” in a tone that searches for normalcy and lands on strained. Phil taps the first thing that comes to his finger to give Dan privacy and watches _cute dog!!! vine compilation updated 2017!!!_ and looks up and Dan’s crying. It’s not either of his usual genres of crying, not the shredded sobs of too much and not the single aching tear of not enough. It’s just tears that keep falling, and his free hand that keeps coming up to wipe them away.

He waves at Dan, asks something with an eyebrow raise and a thumbs up, gets a little nod back, and watches slime videos with poppy music in the background and sinks lower and lower into a daze until he’s asleep.

* * *

Morning comes with Dan’s alarm. They’re both lying tangled, limbs crossed and bent like they were dropped like rag dolls in the night. Phil props himself up, reaching clumsily for the phone, and his neck complains shrilly. Dan’s here, stirring but not waking, his face wan and his eyes a little swollen. Phil settles back down and curls his fingers into Dan’s hair. He remembers now what happened last night.

There’s a text from Marianne waiting on his phone when he turns over a few minutes later, struggling with his glasses. _Depart hotel 8:30_ , it says, _If you don’t mum Dan I’ll have to do it and nobody wants that._

Phil groans, squinting at the time and seeing 7:50. Dan makes a quizzical noise behind him, which might mean that he’s awake, so Phil turns back over.

“Half an hour til we leave,” he says, and his voice comes out croakier than he means it to. He doesn’t know what it means to mum Dan, but it sounds like something he’s used to doing already, automatic and unrequested.

“Mm,” says Dan, eyes closed.

“I’m hungry,” Phil says, more for something to say than because he is hungry, but to be fair he’s always hungry now, always tired, always fighting his way to the end of the day.

“Mm.”

Phil glances around the room, looking for a room service menu, because the only things on the bus at the moment are stale Cheerios and birthday cake pop tarts. They won’t be keeping her much longer, and then there are flights and limited storage. He spends maybe three minutes squinting around before he remembers it’s a very middling establishment and doesn’t offer room service. He informs Dan of his mistake, mildly embarrassed.

“Fucking diva,” is Dan’s blunt response, and then he covers his head with the duvet and disappears.

Phil is out of bed and still halfway asleep before he really has a plan. It isn’t much of one, he admits. It only involves the breakfast buffet in the lobby and Dan’s toothbrush, but it has a maybe ten percent hope of making Dan smile. He finds clothes in his suitcase, an II hoodie that was maybe his once but has Dan’s scent clinging to the lining, and gets all the way down the elevator and through the lobby before he runs out of Instagram to look at. It’s instinct, tapping the Facebook app even though he knows there’s nothing he wants to see, and then his stomach twists badly around a notification he isn’t expecting.

_Jacqueline Howell, 3:18 AM. Thank you Phil._

It takes him nine minor breakdowns to get through the breakfast line, wrapping stale raisin bread in paper napkins with hopelessly shaky hands. The dreadful paradox: he doesn’t want to reply without consulting Dan, and he doesn’t know if Dan’s mum wants him to know she sent the message.

“Excuse me,” a grandmother says in a genuinely astounding cowboy accent, and Phil backs out of line hastily and takes his bread and his nerves to room 131 with Dan’s snitched keycard.

Inside, he’s calmer. Dan left a bit of a mess, towel on the floor in the bathroom and the contents of his suitcase strewn across the bed, but it’s Dan’s mess and Dan’s things and the silence of the room in combination with the familiarity of its items relieves some of the crackling-electricity anxiety. Maybe he doesn’t need to reply. Maybe everything is okay. He sits on Dan’s bed and empties out Dan’s toiletry bag, gathers his toothbrush and deodorant to present alongside the breakfast. His fingers trip on a zipped plastic bag, stuff he doesn’t recognize as Dan’s, and he tugs it free and feels his lungs swell with some huge emotion he can’t identify. There’s a handful of plasters first, but then there’s the painkillers that touch Phil’s migraines, there’s the stupid lactose medicine he never takes, there’s the best brand of motion sickness drugs, there’s a travel-size contact solution bottle. All tucked in Dan’s bag, hidden away without fanfare for the day Phil realizes he’s run out of something he needs, forgotten something three states away with no drugstore in sight. He finds himself tearing up inexplicably, the second time in two days when he hasn’t cried properly since Dan’s blackest day on record. He tucks it back away and stands.

_Phil Lester, 8:07 AM. Thank you. We always take care of each other._

* * *

Dan is hard to wake. He’s sulky and cuddly which is the worst combination, and eventually Phil just lets him wrap koala-like into his lap and eats the raisin bread and tries halfheartedly to stop the crumbs from falling into Dan’s hair.

“Daniel,” he says in his primmest voice when the time reads 8:20. “We have ten minutes. If you don’t wake up I’ll have to tell Marianne that you’re being difficult.”

Dan says something incoherent that Phil barely interprets as being _go ahead_ or maybe _coward_.

“ _Dan_ , I got you breakfast and also your toothbrush.”

There’s a perplexed silence and Dan propping himself up on an elbow. “You got my toothbrush?”

“Yeah,” Phil says, pleased with himself, expecting Boyfriend Points.

“You _stole_ my _key_?” and the tone is less boyfriend-points than it is staged indignation. “I’m telling this story on Instagram.”

Phil pouts a little. “You were depressed and I figured you wanted your toothbrush and I wanted to let you sleep and I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Dan considers this and pillows his head back on Phil’s arm. He looks thoughtful. Quiet. Maybe pleased.

“What?”

“You don’t ever say the word,” Dan says softly, his fingers tapping slowly at the inside of Phil’s wrist. “Like it’s hard for you. Depressed.”

Phil swallows, not entirely sure what to say, what to think. “I guess,” he says eventually, “I guess I don’t like acknowledging something’s wrong if I can’t fix it.”

Dan hoists himself up, a birdsnest of hair and warm pink cheeks. He looks alive today. Like there’s blood in his veins. He takes one of the pieces of raisin bread and starts shredding it slowly between his fingers, crumbs cascading to the hotel duvet. He doesn’t look at Phil. “I thought maybe you were ashamed.”

He looks now, and Phil looks back, and there aren’t any words in his brain or in his mouth but he thinks Dan gets it, because he tangles his fingers together with Phil’s and starts putting the strips of bread in his mouth without need for prompting.

* * *

“So tell me about your mum,” Phil says. “If you want to.”

They’re skating down the highway, an easy trek, roll into a venue and perform and roll out again. It’s probably a million degrees Celsius outside but the driver has the aircon on sci-fi levels of power and Dan’s curled up on Phil’s shoulder in a blanket playing solitaire on his iPad and refusing to laugh at any of Phil’s quips about which-of-us-is-supposed-to-be-the-granddad. Phil is determined not to look at the screen and is staring straight out the window instead.

“Um,” Dan says. There’s the shuffle of cards, a tinny sound effect. “Like what?”

“Anything.”

They’re alone in the back lounge of the bus, which is pretty much guaranteed them in the morning but is politely appropriated at night. Sure, they’re the talent, but they don’t get to monopolize the room with the TV when half of them can’t even look at it for more than thirty seconds.

“I told her. We talked a lot about – well, me. When I was younger. Me now. She said she wished she’d seen it earlier because it was there. I said it was okay.” He brings his hand to his mouth, chewing at a nail absently. Phil thinks about reaching out and taking the hand but decides it might distract him. “We both cried a bit.”

There’s a long silence, so Phil takes the hand anyway and curls it between his own. Such a big hand, such delicate bones.

“She wanted to know if I blamed her or Dad for it. I said no.”

“Is that true?”

Dan breathes out, in, out. “It’s true.”

The bus rocks, and they rock with it, pressed close in tandem. Phil can feel Dan’s heartbeat in his wrist.

“I’m glad I called,” he says eventually. “It feels like a piece of closure.”

Phil nods. The bus rattles. The road slips on.

**Author's Note:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://cityofphanchester.tumblr.com/post/178115997755/for-a-better-tomorrow)!


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